The Disinvent Movement by Susanna Gendall

Author:Susanna Gendall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victoria University Press
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Maurice’s friend was the one who pointed out the plum tree in the neighbours’ garden and the branch that hung provocatively over our fence. We admired it out the dirty living-room window, letting it buoy our conversation for a few minutes as we sipped weak tea. We considered the foggy mauve of the plums and whether this was the shade that signified ripeness. Right now the plums were all we had in common and we were thorough in exhausting the subject. Maurice’s friend’s aunt in Devon had a plum tree he used to climb up, but they were damson plums – a rounder shape, a redder colour. His aunt used to make him sit in the back garden and take all the stones out of them. She’d given him fifty pence for every hundred stones. I told him about my own childhood plum tree that produced only three or four plums a year that were always bitter and yellow. We went through the varieties, the colours, the seasons. We both recognised it as the potential exit route out of our strangerliness but neither of us were ready to say anything. I opened the window to break the silence that had crystallised between us as we lingered near the tree, waiting for it to nourish us with more words. A fat pigeon settled on one of the branches and flapped its wings, and the branch swung violently as it adjusted once again to lightness. There was a dull thud in the next-door garden.

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